Guided Reading

Summary: Guided reading may have several different approaches to it, but the overall success falls on the teacher. The teacher must design student interactions that guide children to the reading task, as well as use scaffolding to provide feedback to the students about their skills, strategies, and knowledge of the story. The overall goal must remain to help students become more competent readers. By using and modeling, coaching, and reflecting, to name a few, to help children experience the text in a meaningful way, teachers can make guided reading a great tool to accomplish this goal.

Even though this article gave a lot of detailed information, and I know I won't be able to remember all of it, I think the best thing to do is for me to summarize and be able to answer the question, "what is guided reading? And how is it demonstrated in a classroom?" 

In order to really answer this question, I am combining my new knowledge with my knowledge from the Gunning textbook about Guided Reading, as well as the information that was given today in class. From all of these sources, I have gathered that Guided Reading is a template a teacher uses to assist and guide students as they carefully read a selected text. Steps that must be included in this process are: setting a focus, introducing the book, the first reading of the text, and repeated reading while scaffolding and guiding. While all of the information is important, I personally felt that scaffolding was the deal breaker. If a teacher is well trained and knowledgeable of how to properly scaffold, guided reading can be a huge success. 

And after today's class discussion, I have a much clearer understanding of how it could look in a classroom. For example, the 2 Day Format used in the Ozarks, emphasizes reading one day and writing the next. It activates the brain by beginning with word work, then introduces the book for a couple minutes, then it actually has students read the text to themselves for up to 8 minutes, and then closes with assessing their comprehension. On Day 2, the majority of the time is spent on connecting the reading to the writing and helping students to use their reading to become more proficient writers. 

I really enjoyed talking about guided reading and being able to use two different text books as well as class notes and discussion. The variety of sources used really allowed me to get a good grasp on what it is and how it can be used in a classroom .

Dorn, L. J. (1998). Apprenticeship in literacy. (pp. 41-55). Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers